In spite of the vast technological progress and improvement in the standard of
management systems within hazardous industries around the world, occupational
health and safety incidents and fatalities continue to devastate thousands of lives
each year.
Throughout the last decade, significant improvement has been achieved in the
reduction of health and safety incident rates across the South African petrochemical
environment. However, a persistent roller-coaster fatality rate still prevails. Recent
studies have shown that in order to conquer the relentless battle in realizing
sustainable world-class health and safety performance, an organisation has to move
beyond the traditional compliance orientated safety focus towards an interdependent
safety culture in which safety is ubiquitous and embedded in the hearts of all
employees.
The root causes of more and more occupational health and safety incidents are no
longer as a result of mechanical or systems failure, but instead originate from the
attitude, values and beliefs of management and employees with regard to the
significance of safety, also known as the safety culture. This has ignited a rising
interest in the concept of safety culture among organisations because of the positive
impact on occupational health and safety in reducing the potential for fatalities,
injuries and workplace incidents.
Hence the primary objective of this study is to determine the maturity of the current
safety culture in the South African petrochemical environment by identifying
particular culture shortfalls which could lead to hesitant progress towards the desired
interdependent state. In order to reach this objective, three secondary objectives
have also been set. Firstly, an understanding of the concept of organisational culture
and safety culture is crucial. In simple terms, organisational culture can be described
as the shared values, assumptions and beliefs in an organisation that ultimately
direct employee behaviour. Organisational culture is characterised by three layers
known as artefacts, espoused values and basic assumptions. These layers represent the manifestation of the organisational culture and vary in terms of outward
visibility and resistance to change. Understanding and analysing these layers
provide the reasons why employees behave in certain ways. Safety culture is a subset
of organisational culture; in other words, it is the manifestation of the
organisation?s attitude, values and commitment in regard to the importance of health
and safety. Companies which have developed effective safety cultures have
demonstrated unequivocal results in closing the elusive health and safety
performance gap.
Secondly, the fundamental components conducive of an effective safety culture were
explored. These components include management and employee commitment to
health and safety, accountability and involvement, communication and trust, risk
awareness and compliance, competency and learning and finally recognition. Most
of the components can be assigned to the artefact level or a combination of the level
of artefacts and espoused values with only a small number more appropriately
associated with the level of basic assumptions. The effectiveness within each of
these areas ultimately dictates the nature of the safety culture and the success in
preventing health and safety incidents.
The focus of the last secondary objective was to determine the development stages
leading to an effective safety culture known as an interdependent safety culture.
Each of these stages represents the degree of maturity of the attitudes and
commitment of management and employees in relation to the ongoing health and
safety improvement in the organisation. The DuPont model suggests that in a
reactive safety culture, safety is merely a natural instinct with no real perceived value
for the individual or organisation. Moving towards a dependent safety culture,
employees start to value safety but only so they do not get caught. The next stage
called an independent safety culture is characterised by self preservation. In this
stage, the mindset of employees changed towards an attitude of ?I do things safe so
I do not get hurt?. In the final stage known as interdependent safety culture,
employees embrace safety as a personal virtue not only for their own safety but also
in contribution to the safety of their peers. In such a culture it is employees? desire to
do things safely so that no-one gets hurt. An empirical study was conducted through a quantitative research approach in the
form of a safety climate questionnaire. The target population consisted of first-line
managers and non-managerial personnel within the production; maintenance;
laboratory; technical, and the safety, health and environment departments in a
petrochemical organisation.
In light of the results emanating from the empirical study it can be concluded that an
overall positive perception was observed towards the selected safety culture
components indicative through the mean response scores above the neutral scale of
3. Older and more experienced employees demonstrated a more positive response
to the safety compared to younger employees. However, several distinctive safety
culture shortcomings were also identified. In the current safety culture, health and
safety is sometimes overlooked due to productivity or cost implications. Employees
tend to withhold safety related information to themselves as a culture of guilt prevails
and mere compliance to safety standards is considered adequate. Solutions to
health and safety problems are most of a short-term nature and do not address the
root cause.
It therefore provides evidence that the organisation under evaluation has not yet
reached the desired safety culture maturity stage of interdependence. Although the
study population is limited to a single organisation, the shortfalls identified could
relate to the larger petrochemical environment and thus could explain the recent
fluctuating health and safety performance. This assumption, however, can only be
validated through further research within a much greater sample size inclusive of
more than one organisation in the petrochemical environment.
It is thus clear that the existing safety culture within the petrochemical organisation
could lead to potential health and safety incidents if the shortcomings are not
appropriately addressed.